"infraorder level. The term ""prosimian"" is considered taxonomically obsolete, although it is used to emphasize similarities between strepsirrhines, tarsiers, and the early primates. Prosimian Prosimians are a group of primates that includes all living and extinct strepsirrhines (lemurs, lorisoids, and adapiforms), as well as the haplorhine tarsiers and their extinct relatives, the omomyiforms, i.e. all primates excluding the simians. They are considered to have characteristics that are more ""primitive"" (ancestral or plesiomorphic) than those of simians (monkeys, apes, and humans). Simians emerged within the Prosimians as sister group of the haplorhine tarsiers, and therefore cladistically belong to this group. However,"
"Mammal Mammals ( from Latin ""mamma"" ""breast"") are vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia, and characterized by the presence of mammary glands, which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young; a neocortex (a region of the brain); hair; and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles and birds, from which they diverged in the late Triassic. There are around 5,450 species of mammals. The largest orders are the rodents, bats and Soricomorpha (shrews and allies). The next three are the Primates (apes, monkeys, and allies), the Cetartiodactyla (whales and even-toed ungulates), and the Carnivora (cats,"
"it excluded hominoids (apes and humans). Thus the term ""monkey"" no longer referred to a recognized scientific taxon. The smallest accepted taxon which contains all the monkeys is the infraorder Simiiformes, or simians. However this also contains the hominoids (apes and humans), so that monkeys are, in terms of currently recognized taxa, non-hominoid simians. Colloquially and pop-culturally, the term is ambiguous and sometimes monkey includes non-human hominoids. In addition, frequent arguments are made for a monophyletic usage of the word ""monkey"" from the perspective that usage should reflect cladistics. A group of monkeys may be commonly referred to as a"
"egg. Their external and internal structure; their comparative anatomy, habits, instincts, and various relations to each other, are detailed in authors who prosessedly treat on their subjects."" The list has been broken down into the original six classes Linnaeus described for animals; Mammalia, Aves, Amphibia, Pisces, Insecta, & Vermes. These classes were ultimately created by studying the internal anatomy, as seen in his key: By current standards Pisces and Vermes are informal groupings, Insecta also contained arachnids and crustaceans, and one order of Amphibia comprised sharks, lampreys, and sturgeons. Linnaeus described mammals as: ""Animals that suckle their young by means"
"Hominidae The Hominidae (), whose members are known as great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: ""Pongo"", the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan; ""Gorilla"", the eastern and western gorilla; ""Pan"", the common chimpanzee and the bonobo; and ""Homo"", which includes modern humans and its extinct relatives (e.g., the Neanderthal), and ancestors, such as ""Homo erectus"". Several revisions in classifying the great apes have caused the use of the term """"hominid"""" to vary over time. Its original meaning referred only to humans (""Homo"") and their closest extinct relatives. That restrictive"
"zoologist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger in his 1811 work ""Prodromus Systematis Mammalium et Avium"". However, James Rennie, author of ""The Natural History of Monkeys, Opossums and Lemurs"" (1838), pointed out that the placement of five different groups of mammals - monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers, aye-ayes and marsupials (with the exception of kangaroos, that were placed under the order Salientia) - under a single order (Pollicata) did not appear to have a strong justification. In 1816, French zoologist George Cuvier classified all marsupials under the order Marsupialia. In 1997, researcher J. A. W. Kirsch and others accorded infraclass rank to Marsupialia. There"
"Anthropomorpha Anthropomorpha is a defunct taxon, replaced by ""Primates"". The order was established by Carl Linnaeus in the first edition of his book Systema Naturae (1735) for genera ""Homo"" (humans), ""Simia"" (monkeys and apes in general) and ""Bradypus"" (sloths). The taxon is notable for the history of human taxonomy as the first to combine apes (Linnaeus' ""Simia"") and humans under the same clade. In the 1758 edition of the same book, Linnaeus discarded this name and began to use the word Primates, which has replaced Anthropomorpha completely. A dissertation on the ""Anthropomorpha"" was published by Linnaeus' student Christian Emmanuel Hoppius"
"as the Barbary ape. Later in the first half of the 20th century, the idea developed that there were trends in primate evolution and that the living members of the order could be arranged in a series, leading through ""monkeys"" and ""apes"" to humans. Monkeys thus constituted a ""grade"" on the path to humans and were distinguished from ""apes"". Scientific classifications are now more often based on monophyletic groups, that is groups consisting of ""all"" the descendants of a common ancestor. The New World monkeys and the Old World monkeys are each monophyletic groups, but their combination was not, since"
"prosimians are primarily vertical clingers and leapers. These include many bushbabies, all indriids (i.e., sifakas, avahis and indris), sportive lemurs, and all tarsiers. Other prosimians are arboreal quadrupeds and climbers. Some are also terrestrial quadrupeds, while some are leapers. Most monkeys are both arboreal and terrestrial quadrupeds and climbers. Gibbons, muriquis and spider monkeys all brachiate extensively, with gibbons sometimes doing so in remarkably acrobatic fashion. Woolly monkeys also brachiate at times. Orangutans use a similar form of locomotion called quadramanous climbing, in which they use their arms and legs to carry their heavy bodies through the trees. Chimpanzees and"
"record|paleontological record]] has been recalibrated, and the intervening years have seen much debate and progress concerning the theoretical underpinnings of systematization itself, partly through the new concept of [[cladistics]]. Though field work gradually made Simpson's classification outdated, it remains the closest thing to an official classification of mammals. Most mammals, including the six most species-rich [[order (biology)|orders]], belong to the placental group. The three largest orders in numbers of species are [[Rodent]]ia: [[Mouse|mice]], [[rat]]s, [[porcupine]]s, [[beaver]]s, [[capybara]]s and other gnawing mammals; [[Chiroptera]]: bats; and [[Soricomorpha]]: [[shrew]]s, [[Mole (animal)|moles]] and [[solenodon]]s. The next three biggest orders, depending on the [[biological classification]]"
"incite, mould, and eventually react to scientific discoveries and knowledge. The STS approach to primatology and sociobiology stretches beyond studying the apes, into the realm of observing the people studying the apes. Before Darwin, and before molecular biology, the father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, organized natural objects into kinds, that we now know reflect their evolutionary relatedness. He sorted these kinds by morphology, the shape of the object. Animals such as monkeys, chimpanzees and orangutans resemble humans closely, so Linnaeus placed ""Homo sapiens"" together with other similar-looking organisms into the taxonomic order ""Primates"". Modern molecular biology reinforced humanity’s place"
"to the level of order. However, the many affinities between humans and other primates — and especially the ""great apes"" — made it clear that the distinction made no scientific sense. In ""The Descent of Man"", Charles Darwin wrote:The greater number of naturalists who have taken into consideration the whole structure of man, including his mental faculties, have followed Blumenbach and Cuvier, and have placed man in a separate Order, under the title of the Bimana, and therefore on an equality with the orders of the Quadrumana, Carnivora, etc. Recently many of our best naturalists have recurred to the view"
"Ape Apes (Hominoidea) are a branch of Old World tailless anthropoid primates native to Africa and Southeast Asia. They are the sister group of the Old World monkeys, together forming the catarrhine clade. They are distinguished from other primates by a wider degree of freedom of motion at the shoulder joint as evolved by the influence of brachiation. In traditional and non-scientific use, the term ""ape"" excludes humans, and is thus not equivalent to the scientific taxon Hominoidea. There are two extant branches of the superfamily Hominoidea: the gibbons, or lesser apes; and the hominids, or great apes. Except for"
"Simian The simians (infraorder Simiiformes) are monkeys and apes, cladistically including: the New World monkeys or platyrrhines, and the catarrhine clade consisting of the Old World monkeys and apes (including humans). The simian is sister to the tarsiers, together forming the haplorhines. The radiation occurred about 60 million years ago (during the Cenozoic era). Forty million years ago, simians from Africa colonized South America, giving rise to the New World monkeys. The remaining simians (catarrhines) split 25 million years ago into apes and Old World monkeys. In earlier classification, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans—collectively known as"
"the superfamily Hominoidea, including humans. For example, in his 2005 book, Benton wrote ""The apes, Hominoidea, today include the gibbons and orang-utan ... the gorilla and chimpanzee ... and humans"". Modern biologists and primatologists refer to apes that are not human as ""non-human"" apes. Scientists broadly, other than paleoanthropologists, may use the term ""hominin"" to identify the human clade, replacing the term ""hominid"". See terminology of primate names. See below, History of hominoid taxonomy, for a discussion of changes in scientific classification and terminology regarding hominoids. Below is a cladogram with extinct species. It is indicated approximately how many million"
"Baboon Baboons are Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio, part of the subfamily Cercopithecinae which are found natively in very specific areas of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The five species are some of the largest non-hominoid members of the primate order; only the mandrill and the drill are larger. Previously, the closely related gelada (genus ""Theropithecus"") and the two species (mandrill and drill) of genus ""Mandrillus"" were grouped in the same genus, and these Old World monkeys are still often referred to as baboons in everyday speech. They range in size and weight depending on species. The"
"in 1760. The name is no longer considered valid, as the animals that were included within Anthropomorpha are now believed to belong to multiple clades. For example, two-toed sloths were included within Anthropomorpha, but are now considered to be in the family Megalonychidae, which is not closely related to the primates. Comte de Buffon correctly rejected the combination of sloths and primates within the same order. Anthropomorpha Anthropomorpha is a defunct taxon, replaced by ""Primates"". The order was established by Carl Linnaeus in the first edition of his book Systema Naturae (1735) for genera ""Homo"" (humans), ""Simia"" (monkeys and apes"
"tribe or a troop. Two separate groups of primates are referred to as ""monkeys"": New World monkeys (platyrrhines) from South and Central America and Old World monkeys (catarrhines in the superfamily Cercopithecoidea) from Africa and Asia. Apes (hominoids)—consisting of gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans—are also catarrhines but were classically distinguished from monkeys. (Tailless monkeys may be called ""apes"", incorrectly according to modern usage; thus the tailless Barbary macaque is sometimes called the ""Barbary ape"".) Monkeys range in size from the pygmy marmoset, which can be as small as with a tail and just over in weight, to the male"
"least three common, or traditional, uses of the term ""ape"": non-specialists may not distinguish between ""monkeys"" and ""apes"", that is, they may use the two terms interchangeably; or they may use ""ape"" for any tailless monkey or non-human hominoid; or they may use the term ""ape"" to just mean the non-human hominoids. Modern biologists and primatologists use monophyletic groups for taxonomic classification; that is, they use only those groups that include all descendants of a common ancestor. The superfamily Hominoidea is such a group—also known as a clade. Some scientists now use the term ""ape"" to mean all members of"
"scheme used, are the [[Primate]]s including the [[ape]]s, [[monkey]]s and [[lemur]]s; the [[Cetartiodactyla]] including [[whale]]s and [[even-toed ungulates]]; and the [[Carnivora]] which includes [[cat]]s, [[dog]]s, [[weasel]]s, [[bear]]s, [[Pinniped|seals]] and allies. According to ""[[Mammal Species of the World]]"", 5,416 species were identified in 2006. These were grouped into 1,229 [[genus|genera]], 153 [[family (biology)|families]] and 29 orders. In 2008, the [[International Union for Conservation of Nature]] (IUCN) completed a five-year Global Mammal Assessment for its [[IUCN Red List]], which counted 5,488 species. According to a research published in the ""[[Journal of Mammalogy]]"" in 2018, the number of recognized mammal species is 6,495"
"World monkeys) and Catarrhini (the Old World monkeys and apes). The New World monkeys split from catarrhines about 40 mya, while the apes (Hominoidea) diverged from Old World monkeys (Cercopithecoidea) about 25 mya. The available fossil evidence indicates that both the hominoid and cercopithecoid clades originated in Africa. The following is the listing of the living haplorhine families, and their placement in the Order Primates: The exact placement of early haplorhine families is uncertain owing to limited evidence. The following sets out a possible order put together by Williams, Kay and Kirk in 2010, based on cladograms put together by"
"and was reduced in chimpanzee and gorilla when they became more specialized. According to Richard Dawkins in his book ""The Ancestor's Tale"", chimps and bonobos are descended from ""Australopithecus"" gracile type species while gorillas are descended from Paranthropus. These apes may have once been bipedal, but then lost this ability when they were forced back into an arboreal habitat, presumably by those australopithecines from whom eventually evolved hominins. Early homininaes such as ""Ardipithecus ramidus"" may have possessed an arboreal type of bipedalism that later independently evolved towards knuckle-walking in chimpanzees and gorillas and towards efficient walking and running in modern"
"Linnaeus's inclusion of humans in the primates with monkeys and apes was troubling for people who denied a close relationship between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Linnaeus's Lutheran archbishop had accused him of ""impiety"". In a letter to Johann Georg Gmelin dated 25 February 1747, Linnaeus wrote: Accordingly, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in the first edition of his ""Manual of Natural History"" (1779), proposed that the primates be divided into the Quadrumana (four-handed, i.e. apes and monkeys) and Bimana (two-handed, i.e. humans). This distinction was taken up by other naturalists, most notably Georges Cuvier. Some elevated the distinction"
"Proboscidea The Proboscidea (from the Greek and the Latin ""proboscis"") are a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family (Elephantidae) and several extinct families. This order, first described by J. Illiger in 1811, encompasses the trunked mammals. In addition to their enormous size, later proboscideans are distinguished by tusks and long, muscular trunks; these features were less developed or absent in the smaller early proboscideans. Beginning in the mid Miocene, most members of this order were very large animals. The largest land mammal today is the African elephant weighing up to 10.4 tonnes with a shoulder height of"
"Alternatively, following Cela-Conde and Ayala (2003), the ""pre-human"" or ""proto-human"" genera of ""Australopithecus"", ""Ardipithecus"", ""Praeanthropus"", and possibly ""Sahelanthropus"" may be placed on equal footing alongside the genus ""Homo"". An even more radical view rejects the division of ""Pan"" and ""Homo"" as separate genera, which based on the Principle of Priority would imply the re-classification of chimpanzees as ""Homo paniscus"" (or similar). Human taxonomy on one hand involves the placement of humans within the Taxonomy of the hominids (great apes), and on the other the division of archaic and modern humans into species and, if applicable, subspecies. Modern zoological taxonomy was"
"primates, consisting of tarsiers and the simians. Simians are divided into two groups: catarrhine (narrow-nosed) monkeys and apes of Africa and Southeast Asia and platyrrhine (""flat-nosed"") or New World monkeys of South and Middle America. Catarrhines consist of Old World monkeys (such as baboons and macaques), gibbons and great apes; New World monkeys include the capuchin, howler and squirrel monkeys. Humans are the only extant catarrhines to have spread successfully outside of Africa, South Asia, and East Asia, although fossil evidence shows many other species were formerly present in Europe. New primate species are still being discovered. More than 25"
"destruction]], though there are efforts to combat this. [[File:Mammal species pie chart.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|The orders [[Rodent]]ia (blue), [[Chiroptera]] (red) and [[Soricomorpha]] (yellow) together make up over 70% of mammal species. Mammal classification has been through several iterations since [[Carl Linnaeus]] initially defined the class. No classification system is universally accepted; McKenna & Bell (1997) and Wilson & Reader (2005) provide useful recent compendiums. [[George Gaylord Simpson]]'s ""Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals"" (AMNH ""Bulletin"" v. 85, 1945) provides [[systematics]] of mammal origins and relationships that were universally taught until the end of the 20th century. Since Simpson's classification, the [[fossil"
"The primates called ""apes"" today became known to Europeans after the 18th century. As zoological knowledge developed, it became clear that taillessness occurred in a number of different and otherwise distantly related species. Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark was one of those primatologists who developed the idea that there were trends in primate evolution and that the extant members of the order could be arranged in an "".. ascending series"", leading from ""monkeys"" to ""apes"" to humans. Within this tradition ""ape"" came to refer to all members of the superfamily Hominoidea except humans. As such, this use of ""apes"" represented"
"mya (""Homo"" & ""Pan""). In 2015, a new genus and species were described, ""Pliobates cataloniae"", which lived 11.6 mya, and appears to predate the split between Hominidae and Hylobatidae. The families, and extant genera and species of hominoids are: Ape Apes (Hominoidea) are a branch of Old World tailless anthropoid primates native to Africa and Southeast Asia. They are the sister group of the Old World monkeys, together forming the catarrhine clade. They are distinguished from other primates by a wider degree of freedom of motion at the shoulder joint as evolved by the influence of brachiation. In traditional and"
"Pongidae Pongidae, or the Pongids, is an obsolete primate taxon containing the gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. They are sometimes called ""great apes"". Pongidae is now known to be paraphyletic. Pongids gave rise to Hominina around seven mya. The corresponding crown group for this taxon is Hominidae. Pongidae has seven extant member species. This taxon is rarely used today but is of historical significance.. The pongid skull contains the following features that are absent or less pronounced in humans: The following adaptations are for arboreal and knuckle walking locomotion and are not found in humans: The australopithecines show intermediate character states"
"Finally, English names are preferred whenever they exist. This makes it especially suited for non-specialists who wish to gain an easy overview. For the full picture, the non-simplified versions above should be consulted. Mammal classification Mammalia is a class of animal within the Phylum Chordata. Mammal classification has been through several iterations since Carl Linnaeus initially defined the class. No classification system is universally accepted; McKenna & Bell (1997) and Wilson & Reader (2005) provide useful recent compendiums. Many earlier ideas from Linnaeus et al. have been completely abandoned by modern taxonomists, among these are the idea that bats are"
"do not possess a tail, unlike most monkeys. Monkeys are more likely to be in trees and use their tails for balance. While the great apes are considerably larger than monkeys, gibbons (lesser apes) are smaller than some monkeys. Apes are considered to be more intelligent than monkeys, which are considered to have more primitive brains. The history of hominoid taxonomy is complex and somewhat confusing. Recent evidence has changed our understanding of the relationships between the hominoids, especially regarding the human lineage; and the traditionally used terms have become somewhat confused. Competing approaches to methodology and terminology are found"
"attributed to ""Victoriapithecus"", the earliest Old World monkey. Among the genera thought to be in the ape lineage leading up to 13 million years ago are ""Proconsul"", ""Rangwapithecus"", ""Dendropithecus"", ""Limnopithecus"", ""Nacholapithecus"", ""Equatorius"", ""Nyanzapithecus"", ""Afropithecus"", ""Heliopithecus"", and ""Kenyapithecus"", all from East Africa. At sites far distant from East Africa, the presence of other generalized non-cercopithecids, that is, non-monkey primates, of middle Miocene age—""Otavipithecus"" from cave deposits in Namibia, and ""Pierolapithecus"" and ""Dryopithecus"" from France, Spain and Austria—is further evidence of a wide diversity of ancestral ape forms across Africa and the Mediterranean basin during the relatively warm and equable climatic regimes"